


Lead and Ink

by violasarecool



Series: What Can 8 Grey Wardens Do? [10]
Category: Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Circle Tower, Gen, Mage Origin, Vallaslin
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-02
Updated: 2016-04-02
Packaged: 2018-05-30 15:57:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,943
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6430927
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/violasarecool/pseuds/violasarecool
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Quentin has a dream about his parents, reads a book, and gets into trouble with the Circle. it's only <i>partly</i> Neri's fault.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lead and Ink

Quentin stood nervously outside the door to Irving's study; two Templars stood on either side of the door, as much to guard him as to guard the entrance. Inside, raised voices could be heard, muffled conversation occasionally clarifying into audible phrases, Irving's voice closer to the door.

"I won't have your Templars looming over me at every waking hour."

A muffled response.

"Might I remind you _I am not everyone._ I do not require additional protection."

"...not _for you,_ you stubborn fool."

A low reprimand, then a reply accompanied by footsteps that echoed back and forth as if pacing the length of the room.

"No, Gregor. He's my apprentice, I'll deal with him as I like."

"...the other apprentices..."

"...My decision on this is final. Good _day,_ Gregor."

Moments later, the door slammed open, and Knight-Commander Gregor strode out. He gestured brusquely to the Templars stationed on either side of the door, giving Quentin a death stare as he went. Quentin swallowed, turning back as Irving came to the door. "Come," Irving said, his mouth a thin line.

Quentin followed him inside, closing the door behind him. Irving sat behind his desk, resting his elbows on its surface. "You've never given me this much trouble before," he said, looking tiredly at Quentin.

"I'm sorry," Quentin said, hands balled in his robes.

Irving waved a hand at him. "There's no sense in apologies now. I do need to know a few things, however. Other than the escaped mage and your young friend, who helped you?"

"I don't know," Quentin said, "I didn't meet them. He just told us he'd talked to others."

"Hm." Irving stared at him a moment longer, then shook his head. "Given our problems with that one in the past, I'm inclined to believe you. He's always been... quite prepared." He pinched the bridge of his nose, eyes closed. "Well." He opened his eyes. "All that remains, then, is the matter of your punishment." Quentin bit his lip anxiously. "You're not to leave the tower for the next month. You're also revoked of leisure privileges for that period, as well as―" his mouth turned up slightly, "library privileges." Quentin groaned softly. "And while Gregor would also have you followed by a personal _retenue_ of Templars, I've arranged to have you stay under my watch for the next month."

"Thank you, ser," Quentin said.

Irving snorted. "Don't thank me, I'm as reluctant as you are to have a hoarde of Templars breathing down our necks during our lessons. But don't think that means you're getting off easy. I expect you to put in double the work to make up for putting me through all of this."

"Yes, ser."

"That will be all," Irving said.

Quentin walked toward the door, stomach twisting uncomfortably. _At least that's over. Now it's just_ ―

"Quentin," Irving said hesitantly, and Quentin stopped, hand on the door, heart pounding. "Was it really worth all of that?" Irving asked, a small note of bewilderment creeping into his voice.

Quentin didn't turn, but touched a hand to his face, still tender from the previous night.

"Yes."

* * *

Two weeks earlier:

_"Where are you going, Da'len?" Hands on his shoulders, then a face, radiant, long white hair she tucks behind one ear._

_Arms around him, then a blur of movement, and he's in the air. The air smells spicy, like peppers and garlic._

_"Soup's almost done!" Another voice, deeper, then a face, deep lines creasing his forehead._

_"Okay, be right there." The woman smiles at the man, then back at him. "Dinner time."_

_He reaches out a hand to her face, touching the pale markings on her skin. She covers his hand with hers._

_"Vallaslin," she says. "Can you say that? Va-lla-sss-lin." He says something, and she laughs. "Close." The room around them shifts, and they move, the sound of clanking and crackling getting closer. And a humming sound, someone quietly singing. "You'll get yours one day," she murmurs, "when you're big and strong."_

_The humming is louder now, almost like buzzing. Bright light washes out his vision, and everything fades away._

_"Quentin. Quentin!"_

"Quentin!" He opened one eye, a dimly lit face only feet from his own. "Quentin, get up, you're gonna miss breakfast," the girl said impatiently.

Quentin sat up reluctantly, yawning. "Thanks, Rose."

"No problem." She ran off to catch up with the group of apprentices just leaving by the far door.

Quentin changed into his robes, and walked down to breakfast, where Neri and Petra were already waiting. "Wow, where've you been?" Neri demanded as he sat down.

"Sleeping?" Quentin replied.

"You sleep too much," Neri said, going back to her porridge.

"Not really," he said.

Petra glanced at Quentin, her eyes creased with entertainment. "Hi, Quentin."

"Hey Petra."

"Jowan was looking for you, he said to go find him after his lesson."

"Ok, thanks," Quentin said. He picked up his spoon, and took a mouthful of porridge.

Neri watched a group of young mages chattering excitedly a few tables away. "I wish I could just do my Joining _now._ The lessons _old_ _Reevy_ has me doing are so boooringgg."

"Why would you want to stop learning new spells just because you've completed your Joining?" Petra said.

"You _like_ your teacher, though," Neri said, "if you had Reeves as your teacher, you'd have stopped lessons with him as soon as you could. Like," she turned to Quentin, "you should hear what he has me doing today. He's super busy with like Circle stuff or whatever, so he has me doing 'restraint' exercises all morning. I'm so _bored_ , it's taking all my _restraint_ not to set myself on _fire."_

"Isn't that why he instructed you to do those exercises?" Petra asked, amused.

"Yeah, yeah, or freeze someone solid, or break the tower down with an earthquake, I _know._ Although," she shot Petra a devious grin, "then we'd be free to go wherever we want, so it wouldn't be so bad."

"We'd also have nowhere to live," Quentin pointed out.

"But we could live wherever we _want,"_ Neri exclaimed.

"Uh huh." Petra smiled. "Well, I should be going," she said, "I'm meeting with Wynne to work on advanced healing magic―so I can clean up after reckless mages like you, Neri," she teased.

Neri made a face at her.

"Bye, Petra," Quentin said, as she stood up.

"See you later."

"Really, though," Neri said as Petra walked away, "how come someone so smart and pretty _also_ gets a teacher she has fun with?"

"Pretty?" Quentin asked, grinning as her cheeks darkened.

"What? Shut up!" she protested, shoving a spoonful of porridge in her mouth.

Quentin laughed.

" _Anyway_ ," she said emphatically, "are you ditching me after this, too?" she asked.

"I don't have to. Irving has a meeting, so I have study time," he shrugged. "I'm not quite done, but I've got time."

"Cool."

He ate another spoonful of porridge, then frowned. "Hey, Neri."

"Yeah?"

"Have you heard of something called... Vallaslin?"

"Well, yeah," Neri said, "Vallaslin are Dalish tattoos."

" _Oh,"_ Quentin said. "That makes sense."

She narrowed her eyes at him. "What makes sense?"

"I had a dream about my parents, a memory, I think, from when I was little. My mother had these markings on her face, she said they were... Vallaslin. She told me I'd get them when I was older."

"Wow, your parents must have been first generation Dalish, then, like mine," Neri said, "most of us in the alienage don't get tattoos. I don't know if anyone knows how, anymore."

"Huh," Quentin said.

"Do you remember what they looked like?"

"Their Vallaslin? A bit," Quentin said, "why?"

"We should go check out the library, maybe there's a book on Dalish tattoos, you could try and find theirs," Neri said.

"Maybe. I know there's one on 'Elven Language', there's probably something more general that would include tatoos." He glanced at her, grinning. "I can't believe _you_ just suggested going to the library."

"Oh, shut up," she said, grinning back. "Don't make me regret it."

They went upstairs to the library, tiptoing past some of the older mages to the circle of bookstands where titles were listed. "Here," Quentin said, " _Dalish Culture_ , let's try that."

They walked down the steps back toward the classroom area, stopping in front of the culture section. Neri ran a finger along a row of books, wrinkling her nose in disgust when it came away covered in dust. "These books sure get read a lot."

"Mm." Quentin crouched down, reading the titles. "There it is." He pulled out a small book from the bottom shelf. Its spine was no larger than the pad of his thumb.

"Wow, for a book on all of Dalish culture, you'd think it'd be bigger," Neri said.

"Yeah. But have you ever seen Dalish here? They must not have much to work with." Quentin scanned the other books, but didn't see anything else that looked useful.

Neri snorted. "What, you think _mages_ wrote all of these? Irving might write a lot of stuff, but that's because he's in charge here, I bet it's all paperwork and letters to important people. Only full time _scholars_ have time for writing that many books." Quentin stood up, and they made their way to an empty table. "I'm pretty sure they just dont care."

They sat down, and Quentin opened the book. It started with an explanation of how the author came across a Dalish clan while travelling―"Skip that," Neri said impatiently.

There was a chapter on the commonly accepted history of the Dalish, another on hunting practices observed by the author. As Quentin flipped a page to a description of the caravans they travelled in, a sheet of paper slipped out of the book. Neri caught it before it hit the ground, holding it up to squint at it. "It's a drawing," she said, showing it to Quentin. It was a lead sketch of a Dalish hunter, bowstring pulled taut. There was a signature in the corner.

"Genitivi," Quentin read. "I don't remember seeing his name on the cover." He flipped back to the front of the book. "Nope, it's by 'Avernet Lebeau'."

"Who's Genitivi?" Neri asked.

"Another author. He's written so many books, I keep finding more every time I come to the library."

Neri flicked at a page of the book. "Let's see if there's more."

They flipped through the book page by page. As they went, they found not only more sketches, but notes scribbled in the margins of the book. _"This practice is common to most Ferelden clans,"_ read one addition to a section on cooking. The chapter on language began with a whole page of text crossed out with dark lines that imprinted onto the previous page, with a note above that said _"spoken language among the Dalish cannot and should not be explained solely through the fragments still used in cities."_ What the author had written to provoke this response from Genitivi, they couldn't tell. The lines crossing out the previous text left no legible remains.

As they neared the end of the book, Quentin noticed a clump of paper sitting between the last page and the back cover. He flipped to it, picked up the paper. On the front of the folded sheets was a sketch of an elven face. The vallaslin was more detailed than the face itself, bold sharp lines overshadowing the lightly sketched jaw and cheeks.

"Oo," Neri said. "I like the curly bits."

"Yeah." Quentin stared at it a moment longer, then flipped the page over. Inside were more sketches of faces, Vallaslin curling across them, or zigzagging in angular patterns. "There's so many different kinds," Quentin said.

"From what my dad told me, there's a few patterns that they're all based on, but with little variations, so every elf's Vallaslin is basically unique." Neri pointed at an elf face with angular Vallaslin arcing across their brow and down their cheekbones. "That looks like what my mom has, only it's missing the lines on her chin." She squinted at it. "And maybe some ticks on her forehead? I forget, it's been a while."

They turned the page, Quentin staring at each one in turn, brow furrowed. He finally stopped on one particular design. "That one. That's my mother's." Wavy lines traced the elf's cheekbones, varying in width as if drawn with a calligraphy pen. A block of colour with a hole in the centre sat between their brows, sinking into two lines on either side of their nose.

"Huh," Neri said. "That's kinda cool. Is it exactly the same?"

"I'm... not sure." He tried to remember the face in his dream, but it was fuzzy, hard to grasp. "It's difficult... I barely remember her face."

"You were really little when you left, though," Neri said sympathetically.

"Yeah."

They looked through the rest of the pages; a page later, the sketches turned to deer-like creatures ("Halla," Neri said), and strange creatures that didn't ressemble any one thing ("Gods?" she said, shrugging). After several pages of notes on religious practice, the last page held only a small incomplete sketch of the head of a wolf.

Quentin flipped back to the pages of Vallaslin sketches. "None of these look like my father's."

"At least we found your mom's," Neri said.

Quentin pulled a sheet of paper out of his bag, and a piece of lead. He began copying the sketch of the elf whose Vallaslin ressembled his mother's.

Neri watched for a moment or two, then stood up. "This was cool, but I should probably actually do some of those exercises," she said. "See you later."

"Yeah."

* * *

Neither of them mentioned the sketches again until, a week later, Neri pulled Quentin aside in the hall, a letter in her hand.

"So, I got a letter from my parents," she said. "You remember the day we were looking at that elven culture book full of drawings? And you said your mom said you were gonna get Vallaslin when you were older?"

"Sure," Quentin said, "but you said yourself that no one besides the Dalish outside the city even know how to do it. Let alone the fact we can't leave the tower."

"But you'd want to if you could?"

"I... yeah."

Neri grinned. "I thought you'd say that. Follow me, we can't talk here."

They walked down the hall and through the library, stopping around the corner from the staircase to the second floor. A moment later, a mage stepped away from a bookshelf and came to meet them, his blond hair pulled back into a ponytail. "Neri?" He looked at them both, eyebrows raised.

Neri nodded. "Yeah."

"Gosh, you _are_ young, aren't you."

"I'm not _that_ young," she said irritably.

" _That's_ why you wanted to meet down here, you're still apprentices," the mage said, eyeing their robes.

"Well _I_ won't be for much longer," she said. She glanced at Quentin. "This is Quentin, he's coming with me."

"Alright," the mage replied, "though that'll just make it harder for you." He glanced back at Quentin. "Oh, right, where are my manners. My name's Anders," he said, holding out a hand, which Quentin shook. "Come on, let's go back to my dorm."

They walked up the stairs, past the Templar standing watch, who gave Anders an irritable glare. "They have no love for me," Anders whispered, "I give them way too much trouble." He held open the door to a small dormitory, and they stepped inside, Anders closing the door behiind them. "But that's why you need me!" He stepped around the corner, making sure the entire dormitory was empty. "We're clear."

"So, how's it coming?" Neri asked.

"I've spoken with the Collective," Anders murmured, "they think it shouldn't be a problem to switch to the day your guy's in town. Nothing else they had on was time-sensitive, and me, well―" he grinned, "it's been way too long since I've escaped these walls."

"I've heard about some of your escapes," Neri said. "You're kind of a legend."

"Good," Anders said, "maybe eventually we'll spark a rebellion."

"Maybe," Neri said, grinning at Quentin.

He made a face at her.

"Anyway," Anders said, "I'll give you a few more details later this week when things start picking up, but I just wanted to make sure you were still in."

"Cool," Neri said.

"I also need your _solemn promise_ that you won't tell anyone else anything you know about what we'll be doing."

" _I_ don't even know what we're doing," Quentin said.

Neri laughed. "Oops, that's right." She glanced at Anders. "This guy is helping create a distraction so we can get out unnoticed."

"Yes," Anders said. "I'll also be trying to escape a bit more... permanently than you, but since you two need to get back after, I figure I can spare some time to give you cover."

"Cover to get _where?"_ Quentin asked. "Why did you mention Vallaslin?"

"There's a guy travelling from the Brecilian forest who knows how to do Vallaslin," Neri said, grinning. "My moms know him, he's agreed to do ours. Well, mine," she amended, "but I can totally convince him to do yours, too."

"Oh... You mean... Wow."

"You're less wordy than your friend," Anders said with a smirk.

"In his defence, I _did_ kinda spring this on him," Neri said.

"Do you think he could do mine the same as my mother's?" Quentin said.

She shrugged. "I don't see why not."

"So, to be clear," Anders said, "you're both in? For sure?"

Quentin thought of the paper sandwiched between two books in his bag, the sketch of his mother's Vallaslin. "Yes."


End file.
